I recently tried my hand at buying a previously-owned domain name. There was a domain that I had wanted for years, but it had already been taken. On a whim, I ran a whois search on it a couple weeks ago for some reason or another. I was surprised when I saw that it had expired back in November, and immediately began researching the domain name expiry process.
I found a good article on the subject, How to Snatch an Expiring Domain, from which I refreshed my memory on how the crazy business known as “Drop Catching” works. When a domain expires, it is marked as expired in VeriSign’s database. It remains in that deactivated state for forty days, unless the owner pays the usual fee to renew it. After that initial forty-day period is over, the owner still has a final chance to save the name before it is deleted, but they have to pay a $100 fee to do so. Seventy days after the expiration date, it’s status is changed to “locked” and it will be deleted from the ICANN database five days later during a three-hour window between 2:00pm and 5:00pm EST. As soon as it drops from the database, the name is available for registration.
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